This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Contact: AtlanticYardsReport[at]hotmail.com

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

The next Atlantic Yards District Service Cabinet meeting will be at Brooklyn Borough Hall on Thursday, March 15, from 9:30-11. The meeting, which never quite gets to all the substantive Atlantic Yards issues out there, still typically generates some important information.

I don't have the agenda, but here are a couple of the issues I hope/expect to be addressed.

1) What's the story with the arena policing being assigned to the 78th Precinct? So far that's been announced only with an unsourced story in New York Post. City Council Member Letitia James has called for a new annex and complained about the unilateral decision, which, as I understand it, must be approved by Council.

2) What's happening with Forest City's modular plan for B2? As I reported, the developer seems quite serious about moving forward, but has hit roadblocks at the Department of Buildings. What are those roadblocks? And have the unions signed on? Is a factory in the works?

3) What's the timetable for the reconstruction of the Carlton Avenue Bridge? At the last District Service Cabinet meeting, in January, Forest City's Bob Sanna declared that "the projected completion of the bridge... is the early part of September." But STV, a consultant for Empire State Development, the state agency overseeing Atlantic Yards, has consistently reported that the project is one month behind and due to be completed in late September.

4) Are police, Forest City, and ESD going to do anything about the regular pattern of (apparent) Atlantic Yards construction workers creating free parking by uprooting signs or covering them up? What about (apparent) selective enforcement?

5) Will Forest City and ESD say anything about community requests to reduce the planned 1100-space interim surface parking lot and install landscaping and other features that would be required under Department of City Planning guidelines.

6) What exactly is Lolita Jackson, the city's not-quite-ombudsperson for Atlantic Yards, doing?

7) Will ESD ever fill the opening for community relations manager, the successor position to that occupied by Forrest Taylor, who left nine months ago?